The Historian

The Historian Page 35

Ihave several photographs of my father from the period just before he left the United States to search for Rossi, although when I first saw those images during my childhood, I knew nothing about what they preceded. One of them, which I had framed a few years ago and which now hangs above my writing desk, is a black-and-white image from an era when black and white was being edged out by the color snapshot. It shows my father as I never knew him. He looks directly into the camera, his chin raised a little as if he's about to respond to something the photographer is saying. Who the photographer was I will never know; I forgot to ask my father if he remembered. It couldn't have been Helen, but perhaps it was some other friend, some fellow graduate student. In 1952 - only the date is recorded in my father's hand on the back of the photo - he had been a graduate student for a year and had already begun his research on the Dutch merchants.

In the photograph my father seems to be posing next to a university building, judging by the Gothic stonework in the background. He has one foot jauntily up on a bench, his arm slung over it, hand dangling gracefully near his knee. He wears a white or light colored dress shirt and a tie of diagonal stripes, dark creased trousers, shiny shoes. He has the same build I remember from his later life - average height, average shoulders, a trimness that was pleasant but not remarkable and that he never lost in middle age. His deep-set eyes are gray in the photo but were dark blue in life. With those sunken eyes and bushy eyebrows, the prominent cheekbones, thick nose, and wide thick lips parted in a smile, he has a rather simian look - a look of animal intelligence. If the photograph were color, his slicked-down hair would be bronze in the sunlight; I know about that color only because he described it to me once. When I knew him, from as early as I could remember, his hair was white.

"That night, in Istanbul, I took the full measure of a sleepless night. For one thing, the horror of that moment when I first saw a dead face alive and tried to comprehend what I had seen - that moment alone would have kept me awake. For another thing, knowing that the dead librarian had seen me and then disappeared made me feel the terrible vulnerability of the papers in my briefcase. He knew that Helen and I possessed a copy of the map. Had he appeared in Istanbul because he was following us, or had he somehow figured out that the original of this map was here? Or, if he hadn't deciphered this on his own, was he privy to some source of knowledge I did not know about? He had looked at the documents in Sultan Mehmed's collection at least once. Had he seen the original maps there and copied them? I couldn't answer these riddles, and I certainly couldn't risk dozing, when I thought of the creature's lust for our copy of the map, the way he had leaped on Helen to strangle her for it in the library stacks at home. The fact that he had bitten Helen there, had perhaps acquired a taste for her, made me even more nervous.

"If all this had not been enough to keep me wide-eyed that night while the hours passed more and more quietly, there was the sleeping face not far from my own - but not so close, either. I had insisted that Helen sleep in my bed while I sat up in the shabby armchair. If my eyelids drooped once or twice, a glance at that strong, grave face sent a wave of anxiety through me, bracing as cold water. Helen had wanted to stay in her own room - what, after all, would the concierge think, if she found out about this arrangement? - but I had pressed her until she agreed, if irritably, to rest under my watchful eye. I had seen too many movies, or read too many novels, to doubt that a lady left alone for a few hours at night might be the fiend's next intended victim. Helen was tired enough to sleep, as I could see from the deepening shadows under her eyes, and I had the faintest sense that she was frightened, too. That whiff of fear from her scared me more than another woman's sobs of terror would have and sent a subtle caffeine through my veins. Perhaps, too, something in the languor and softness of her usually haughtily erect form, her diurnal broad-shouldered definiteness, kept my own eyes open. She lay on her side, one hand under my pillow, her curls darker than ever against its whiteness.

"I could not bring myself to read or write. Certainly I had no desire to open my briefcase, which in any case I had pushed under the bed where Helen slept. But the hours wore on, and there was no mysterious scratching in the corridor, no snuffling through the keyhole, no smoke pouring silently in under the door, no beating of wings at the window. Finally a little grayness pervaded the dim room, and Helen sighed as if sensing the coming day. Then a hand span of sunlight made its way through the shutters, and she stirred. I took my jacket, slid the briefcase out from under the bed as quietly as I could, and went tactfully away to wait for her in the entrance downstairs.

"It was not yet six o'clock, but a smell of strong coffee came from somewhere in the house, and to my surprise I found Turgut sitting on one of the embroidered chairs, a black portfolio across his lap. He looked amazingly fresh and wide-awake, and when I entered he jumped up to shake my hand. 'Good morning, my friend. Thank the gods I have found you immediately.'

"'I'm thankful to them, too, that you're here,' I responded, sinking into a chair near him. 'But what on earth brings you so early?'

"'Ah, I could not stay away when I have news for you.'

"'I have news for you, too,' I said grimly. 'You go first, Dr. Bora.'

"'Turgut,' he corrected me absently. 'Look here.' He began to undo the string on the portfolio. 'As I promised you, I went through my papers last night. I have made copies of the material in the archives, as you have seen, and I have also collected many different accounts of events in Istanbul during the period of Vlad's life and directly after his death.' "He sighed. 'Some of these papers mention mysterious occurrences in the city, deaths, rumors of vampirism. I have also collected any information I could from books that might tell me about the Order of the Dragon in Wallachia. But nowhere last night could I find anything new. Then I called my friend Selim Aksoy. He is not at the university - he is a shopkeeper - but he is a very learned man. He knows more about books than anyone in Istanbul, and especially about all books that tell the history and legends of our city. He is a very gracious person, and he gave me much of the evening to look through his own library with me. I asked him to seek for me any trace of a burial of someone from Wallachia here in Istanbul in the late fifteenth century, or any clue that there might be a tomb here somehow connected with Wallachia, Transylvania, or the Order of the Dragon. I also showed him - not for the first time - my copies of the maps, and my dragon book, and I explained to him your theory that those images represent a location, the location of the Impaler's tomb.

"'Together we turned through many, many pages about the history of Istanbul, and looked at old prints, and at the notebooks in which he copies so many things he finds in libraries and museums. He is most industrious, is Selim Aksoy. He has no wife, no family, no other interests. The story of Istanbul eats him up. We worked late into the night, because his personal library is so large that even he has never dived to the bottom of it and could not tell me what we might discover. At last we found a strange thing - a letter - reprinted in a volume of correspondence between the ministers of the sultan's court and many outposts of the Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Selim Aksoy told me that he bought this book from a bookseller in Ankara. It was printed in the nineteenth century, compiled by one of our own historians from Istanbul who was interested in all the records of that period. Selim told me he has never seen another copy of this book.'

"I waited patiently, sensing the importance of all this background, noting Turgut's thoroughness. For a literary scholar, he made a damned good historian.

"'No, Selim does not know this book from any other edition, but he believes the documents reproduced in it are not - how do you say? - forgeries, because he has seen one of these letters in the original, in the same collection we visited yesterday. He is also very adoring of that archive, you know, and I often meet him there.' He smiled. 'Well, in this book, when our eyes were almost closing with fatigue, and the dawn was about to arrive, we found a letter that may have some importance for your search. The collector who printed it believed it to be from the late fifteenth century. I have translated it for you here.'

"Turgut pulled a sheet of notebook paper from his portfolio. 'The earlier letter to which this letter refers is not in the book, alas. God knows it is probably not in existence anywhere, or my friend Selim would have found it long ago.'

"He cleared his throat and read aloud. '"To the most honored Rumeli Kadiasker - "' He paused. 'That was the chief military judge for the Balkans, you know.' I didn't know, but he nodded and went on. '"Honored One, I have now carried out the further investigation you requested. Some of the monks have been most cooperative for the sum we agreed upon, and I have examined the grave myself. What they reported to me originally is true. They have no further explanation to offer me, only repetitions of their terror. I recommend a new investigation of this matter in Istanbul. I have left two guards in Snagov to watch for any suspicious activity. Curiously, there have been no reports of the plague here. I remain yours in the name of Allah."'

"'And the signature?' I asked. My heart was beating hard; even after my sleepless night, I was wide-awake.

"'There is no signature. Selim thinks that perhaps it was torn off the original, either accidentally or to protect the privacy of the man who wrote the letter.' "'Or perhaps it was unsigned to begin with, for secrecy,' I suggested. 'And there are no other letters in the book that refer to this matter?'

"'None. No previous letters, no subsequent letters. It is a fragment, but the Rumeli Kadiasker was very important, so this must have been a serious matter. We searched long and hard after this in my friend's other books and papers and found nothing that is relating to it. He told me he has never seen this wordSnagov in any other accounts of the history of Istanbul that he can remember. He read these letters once a few years ago - it was my telling him where Dracula is supposed to have been buried by his followers that made him notice it while we were looking through the papers. So perhaps he has indeed seen it elsewhere and cannot remember.'

"'My God,' I said, thinking not of the subtle probabilities of Mr. Aksoy's having seen the word elsewhere but rather of the tantalizing nature of this link between Istanbul, all around us, and faraway Romania.

"'Yes.' Turgut smiled as cheerfully as if we'd been discussing a menu for breakfast. 'The public inspectors for the Balkans were very worried about something here in Istanbul, so worried that they sent someone to the grave of Dracula in Snagov.'

"'But, goddammit, what did they find?' I pounded my fist on the arm of my chair. 'What had the priests there reported? And why were they terrified?' "'Exactly my perplexity,' Turgut assured me. 'If Vlad Dracula was resting peacefully there, why were they worried about him hundreds of kilometers away, in Istanbul? And if Vlad's tomb is indeed in Snagov and always was, why do the maps not match that region?'

"I could only respect the precision of his questions. 'There is another thing,' I said. 'Do you think there is indeed the possibility that Dracula was buried here in Istanbul? Would that explain Mehmed's worry about him after his death, and the presence of vampirism here from that era on?'

"Turgut clasped his hands in front of him and put one large finger on his chin. 'That is an important question. We will need help with it, and perhaps my friend Selim is the person to help us.'

"For a moment we sat looking silently at each other in the dim hall of the pension, with the smell of coffee drifting across us, new friends united by an old cause. Then Turgut roused himself. 'Clearly we must search more, further. Selim says he will lead us to the archive as soon as you can be ready. He knows sources there from fifteenth-century Istanbul that I have not much looked at myself because they lie far afield of my own interests in Dracula. We shall look at them together. No doubt Mr. Erozan will be happy to bring out all these materials for us before the public hours if I call him. He lives close to the archive and can open it for us before Selim must go to work himself. But where is Miss Rossi? Has she risen from her chambers yet?'

"This speech prompted a confused rush of thought in my brain, so that I didn't know which problem to address first. The mention of Turgut's librarian friend reminded me suddenly again of my librarian enemy, whom I had nearly forgotten in my excitement about the letter. Now I faced the peculiar task of straining Turgut's credulity by reporting the visitation of a dead man, although surely his belief in historical vampires might be extended to contemporary ones. But his question about Helen reminded me that I had left her alone for an unpardonably long time. I'd wanted to give her privacy as she awoke, and had fully expected her to follow me downstairs as soon as possible. Why hadn't she reappeared by now? Turgut was still talking. 'So Selim - he never sleeps, you know - went for his morning coffee, because he did not wish to surprise you right away - ah, here he is!'

"The bell at the pension door rang and a slender man stepped in, pulling the door shut behind him. I think I had expected an august presence, an aging man in a business suit, but Selim Aksoy was young and slight, dressed in loose-fitting and rather shabby dark trousers and a white shirt. He hurried toward us with an eager, intense look on his face that was not quite a smile. It wasn't until I was shaking his bony hand that I recognized the green eyes and long thin nose. I had seen his face before, and up close. It took me another second to place him, until I had the sudden memory of a slender hand passing me a volume of Shakespeare. He was the bookseller from the little shop in the bazaar.

"'But we've already met!' I exclaimed, and he was exclaiming something similar at the same moment, in what I took to be an amalgamation of Turkish and English. Turgut looked from one to the other of us, clearly perplexed, and when I explained, he laughed, then shook his head as if in wonder. 'Coincidences' was all he said.

"'Are you ready to go?' Mr. Aksoy waved aside Turgut's offer of a seat in the parlor.

"'Not quite,' I said. 'If you don't mind, I will see where Miss Rossi is and when she can join us.'

"Turgut nodded a little too guilelessly.

"I ran into Helen on the stairs - literally, for I suddenly found myself taking the steps three at a time. She grabbed the railing to keep herself from toppling down the staircase. 'Ouch!' she said crossly. 'What in the name of heaven are you doing?' She was rubbing her elbow, and I was trying not to keep feeling the brush of her black suit and firm shoulder against my arm.

"'Looking for you,' I said. 'I'm sorry - are you hurt? I just got a little worried because I'd left you alone up there so long.'

"'I'm fine,' she told me more mildly. 'I've had some ideas. How long before Professor Bora arrives?'

"'He's here already,' I reported, 'and he brought a friend.'

"Helen recognized the young bookseller, too, and they talked, haltingly, while Turgut dialed up Mr. Erozan and shouted into the receiver. 'There has been a rainstorm,' he explained when he returned to us. 'The lines get a little furry in this part of town when it rains. My friend can meet us at once at the archive. He sounded sick, actually, maybe with a cold, but he said he'd come right away. Do you want coffee, madam? And I will buy you some sesame rolls on the way.' He kissed Helen's hand, to my displeasure, and we all hurried out.

"I was hoping to keep Turgut back as we walked so that I could tell him privately about the appearance of the vicious librarian from home; I didn't think I could explain this in front of a stranger, particularly one Turgut had described as having little real sympathy for vampire hunts. Turgut was deep in conversation with Helen before we'd walked a block, however, and I had the double misery of watching her bestow her rare smile on him and of knowing I was keeping back information I ought to give him at once. Mr. Aksoy walked next to me, casting a glance at me now and then, but for the most part he seemed so lost in his own thoughts that I didn't feel I should interrupt him with observations on the beauty of the morning streets.

"We found the outer door to the library unlocked - Turgut said with a smile that he'd known his friend would be prompt - and went quietly in, Turgut ushering Helen gallantly before him. The little entrance hall, with its fine mosaics and the registration book lying open and ready for the day's visitors, was deserted. Turgut held the inner door for Helen, and she had gone well into the hushed, dim hall of the library before I heard her intake of breath and saw her stop so suddenly that our friend almost tripped behind her. Something made the hair on the back of my neck rise even before I could tell what was happening, and then something quite different made me push rudely past the professor to Helen's side.

"The librarian waiting for us stood motionless in the middle of the room, his face turned, as if eagerly, toward our arrival. He was not, however, the friendly figure we'd expected, nor was he already bringing out the box we'd hoped to examine again, or some pile of dusty manuscripts on Istanbul's history. His face was pale, as if drained of life - exactly as if drained of life. This was not Turgut's librarian friend but ours, alert and bright-eyed, his lips unnaturally red and his hungry gaze burning in our direction. At the moment his eyes lit on me, my hand gave a throb where he had bent it back so hard in the library stacks. He was famished for something. Even if I'd had the tranquillity of mind in which to conjecture about that hunger - whether it was a thirst for knowledge or for something else - I would not have had time to form the thought. Before I could so much as step between Helen and the ghoulish figure, she pulled a pistol from her jacket pocket and shot him."